were spies. The cold was intense and wood so scarce that to obtain it men used to row out two miles and collect the boxes thrown overboard from the transports and battleships. Half of these men had but the slightest interest in kindling-wood; they were learning the position of each battleship, counting her guns, noting their caliber, counting the men crowding the rails of the transports, reading the insignia on their shoulder-straps, and, as commands and orders were wigwagged from ship to ship, writing them down. Other spies took the trouble to disguise themselves in rags and turbans, and, mixing with the Tommies, sold them sweetmeats, fruit, and cigarettes. The spy told the Tommy he was his ally, a Serbian refugee; and Tommy, or the _poilu_, to whom Bulgarians, Turks, and Serbians all look alike, received him as a comrade. [Illustration: _From a photograph, copyright by American Press Association._ "The quay supplied every spy--German, Bulgarian, Turk, or Austrian--with an uninterrupted view."] "You had a rough passage from Marseilles," ventures the spy. "We come from the peninsula," says Tommy. "Three thousand of you on such a little ship!" exclaims the sympathetic Serbian. "You must have been crowded!" "Crowded as hell," corrects Tommy, "because there are five thousand of us." Over these common spies were master spies, Turkish and German officers from Berlin and Constantinople. They sat in the same restaurants with the French and English officers. They were in mufti, but had they appeared in uniform, while it might have led to a riot, in this neutral port they would have been entirely within their rights.